P for Perfect

Chapter 29- Yamíl

I was young and alive- Diane

I should probably be spending more time reading. This is the thought that runs through my head as Jibril and I walk down the walkway of my Aunt Diane's house. It's a nice Tuesday afternoon and we just ditched after school lessons to visit her. Probably not the best choice but I'm 18. I'm allowed to make wrong choices.

"You think she's home?" Jibril asks after the second knock goes unanswered. My aunt is old fashioned so she refuses to install a door bell, you've gotta knock as loud as you can to get her to open the door.

"She's probably at the back. Knock harder," I tell him. He's just about to knock again when the door opens and Aunt Diane's defined head pops out.

"It's you two! What are you kids doing here? Don't you have classes?" She asks, opening the door wide any ways. Jibril and I simultaneously shake our heads. No classes aunt. No classes.

We enter the house behind her and I close the door. I've been to this house a thousand times but the art never fails to strike me. She has all sorts of framed pictures hanging on the wall of her living room, giving it this traditional homey feeling. As usual, I look at every picture before I sit down.

I've got 3 pictures I especially love. The first is the family picture they took at the Palace in Benin in 1999. Aunt Diane was 12 and mum was 19. There was a lot of child spacing between the four kids. Uncle Frank, the first born was already 23 when they snapped this picture and Aunt Manny, the third was 15. This picture strikes me a lot because whenever I look at Aunt Diane I see myself. Like a younger, female version of me when I was 12. I get that a lot, when Jibril first met her he went: "Gosh your mum is young." I've had to explain that no, she isn't my mum but my aunt to many people. She does look like mum as well so I guess it's all in the family.

The next picture I love is the one where it's just Aunt Diane, mum and dad. Dad in the middle. They went to watch a match in Agege stadium, back when mum loved football.

The last is a rather confusing picture. It's very old and rusty so I can't see everyone in it clearly but I can see Aunt Diane. She's holding a new born baby, a child of her friend she says. I don't know why but I really like the picture.

"Yamíl go and sit down. You guys are lucky I was just preparing pasta," she tells us, carrying our plates towards us. I meet her halfway and grab them from her.

"You're always preparing pasta," I joke.

"Drinks are in the freezer, I'll be right with you," she disappears into her garden. Aunt D has travelled around the world. And I mean around but she spent most of her time in Italy, drinking fresh wine and rolling with the mafia as she would say. She's grown so accustomed to their food that she cooks them more than she cooks our native food. When she saw the way mum prepared her spaghetti she almost choked, she showed her the right way and when Mercy called it spaghetti when she served it for dinner that night she shushed her immediately and said: "This, my dear, is pasta!"

And so the joke remained.

"You should really learn to cook like your aunt Yamíl, any girl would overlook your missing qualities for this," Jibril tells me as he goes to collect our drinks.

"Hey! What missing qualities?" I demand. He throws a bottle of Sprite at me and shrugs.

"I don't know, a sense of humor?" He laughs at his jokes and I send him a mock grin. I would tease him about Salma but I decide to save it for later, the right time would come. After seeing those two together on Saturday I realized that they were a match made in heaven, it all felt straight out of an Indian series.